Why this Blog ?
News articles in the Wide World of Web, quite often disappear with time, when they are relocated as archives with a different url. Archives in this blog serve as a library for those who are interested in doing Research on Aadhaar Related Topics.

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When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.” -A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathandescribes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone badI have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017

Special

Here is what the Parliament Standing Committee on Finance, which examined the draft N I A Bill said.

1. There is no feasibility study of the project]

2. The project was approved in haste

3. The system has far-reaching consequences for national security

4. The project is directionless with no clarity of purpose

5. It is built on unreliable and untested technology

6. The exercise becomes futile in case the project does not continue beyond the present number of 200 million enrolments

7. There is lack of coordination and difference of views between various departments and ministries of government on the project

"All we have to show for the hundreds of thousands of crore spent on Aadhar is a Congress ticket for Nilekani" Yashwant Sinha.(27/02/2014)

TV Mohandas Pai, former chief financial officer and head of human resources, tweeted: "selling his soul for power; made his money in the company wedded to meritocracy." Money Life Article

Nilekani’s reporting structure is unprecedented in history; he reports directly to the Prime Minister, thus bypassing all checks and balances in government - Home Minister Chidambaram

To refer to Aadhaar as an anti corruption tool despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is mystifying. That it is now officially a Rs.50,000 Crores solution searching for an explanation is also without any doubt. -- Statement by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP & Member, Standing Committee on Finance

Finance minister P Chidambaram’s statement, in an exit interview to this newspaper, that Aadhaar needs to be re-thought completely is probably the last nail in its coffin. :-) Financial Express

The Rural Development Ministry headed byJairam Rameshcreated a road Block and refused to make Aadhaar mandatory for making wage payment to people enrolled under the world’s largest social security scheme NRGA unless all residents are covered.

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Saturday, April 23, 2016

9860 - The Technocratic Visions of Nandan Nilekani: What an Aadhaar-Enabled Future May Look Like - The Wire

The Aadhaar ecosystem is best thought of as a birthday cake: the cherry, the icing and the cake itself. Credit: Australia India Institute

If there’s one person that’s smiling after last Friday, when the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill was given an overwhelming stamp of approval by the Lok Sabha, it’s Nandan Nilekani.

Although the origins of the UID project can be traced back to the first NDA government, it is mostly due to the efforts of the Infosys co-founder and Congress party member that the Aadhaar initiative was given shape and pushed through the largely dysfunctional second UPA government.

With the national identification project now receiving statutory backing, what lies in store for India’s citizens? What else can it be used for; what feats of technological efficiency can be achieved? Or in other words, what sort of house can be built upon the Aadhaar system?

Fortunately for us, Nilekani’s latest book, Rebooting India, released late last year, comes with a number of examples. Nilekani and his co-author, Viral Shah, think almost exclusively in terms of networks, databases and centralisation; the very same centralisation that many people fear can be exploited without the proper privacy and security safeguards that India currently lacks.

At the beginning of Rebooting India, Nilekani illustrates his argument with a diagram of a “class of applications”, that includes ‘social security schemes, subsidies, government services, e-KYC, voting/administration’. This classification, however, is a little messy. It doesn’t adequately explain how Aadhaar could impact our society, both from a positive and negative perspective.

It’s far better to think of an Aadhaar card and its application ecosystem as a birthday cake that consists of three parts: the cake, the icing and the cherry on top. All of the examples given below, divided into three categories, are potential use-cases that have been laid out by Nilekani and Shah in their book.

Part 3 – The cherry

The cherry is what the Aadhaar card is capable of in the future. It’s what can be built upon the UID system and is simultaneously exciting and a little frightening.

Voting 2.0: The Death of Fraud: In early 2015, Chief Election Commissioner H S Brahma announced that the voter ID and Aadhaar number systems would be linked in order to help stamp out voter fraud.

A person with unique biometric data obviously cannot vote twice and as Nilekani and Shah write, “creating a fake voter profile would become so complicated that no would-be election rigger would bother trying.”

This, however, is only the beginning. While the Aadhaar system can obviously be used to speed up our sluggish voter enrolment process, the real advantages come when the voting system becomes electronic. Once our Aadhaar cards allow us to identify ourselves, smartphone applications “can allow every aspect of the voting process – voter registration, address changes, polling booth information, perhaps even casting one’s ballot – to be available to us on our smartphones”.

In the short-term, the government could potentially boost enrolment by algorithmically nudging its citizens once the voter ID and Aadhaar databases are linked ( a suggestion that the book says was made by former CEC N Gopalaswami). Since Aadhaar cards are issued to all Indian residents from birth onwards, the system can “automatically flag those Aadhar card holders who turn 18 in a given year, making them eligible to vote”. Once these potential voters are identified, they can be prompted to start the voter registration process, thus hopefully reducing a barrier for lethargic voters.

The National Health Information Network (NHIN): Imagine an electronic medical record system (EMRS) used by multiple health service providers. “For example, a pharmacist can pull up a prescription, doctors can pull up diagnostic test results from labs online and insurance companies can provide customised quotes based on prior history,” the authors write in their chapter on ‘Towards a Healthy India’.

As with everything else, the Aadhaar number serves as a basis for this as a “natural patient identifier”. Although the construction of a database will require some level of information sharing, once that is allowed by the user in question, the sky’s the limit. In the same way the government distributes subsidies to Aadhaar-linked bank accounts, health-related payments through government-backed insurance schemes can also be carried out.

Patients can walk to different hospitals with their data and after being identified, their health status follows them everywhere. But again, this is only the start. Nilekani & Shah believe that the Aadhaar-backed EMRS will be a “treasure trove of ‘big data’ that can be mined using analytics to identify public health trends, collect statistical data and detect epidemic outbreaks.”

Education, Exams and Jobs: From the problems of implementing the RTE act to the issue of fake resumes, the Aadhaar system has a possible role to play in the future.

The idea is simple: The RTE Act demands that private schools set aside 25% of their enrolment capacity for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Instead of setting aside money only for government schools, some part of that funding that can be used to create ‘school vouchers’ that can be used by needy students to “pay for their education at a school of their choice”. “Aadhaar”, the authors write, “can be used in the creation of a central registry and voucher-issuance platform for schools and students”. “Students can be registered in the system using their Aadhaar numbers.” Once these vouchers are issued, matched against the correct Aadhaar number, parents can enrol their children at a school of their choice.

Changing track a little bit, the Aadhaar card system can also go a long way in cracking down on fake resumes (the authors quote statistics that show that one in five resumes in the IT industry are falsified). Prime Minister Narendra Modi already encourages the “de-materialization” of our educational degrees through his Digital Locker initiative. Once combined with an Aadhaar-based identification, a person’s educational qualifications can be guaranteed, “increasing trust between jobseekers and potential employers”.

Other low-hanging fruit can also be tackled. Entrance examination fraud, the most prominent example of which is the long-running Vyapam scam, can be eliminated to a great extent if students are authenticated using Aadhaar before entering the exam hall.

Part 2 – The icing

If the cherry is what can finally be built upon the Aadhaar number system, the icing is how Aadhaar is being sold by the current and past governments; how it is represented in mainstream debate; how it will eventually be funded.

It is here that there has been the greatest discussion. Nilekani and Shah’s outline here is simple and echoes the Modi government’s logic: Aadhar-backed bank accounts and micro-ATM systems will eventually result in a cashless India. But in the meantime, it can be used to mend India’s social safety nets, fix our leaking subsidy system and bring order to the country’s somewhat chaotic identification system.

A number of legal and academic critics counter the above arguments by pointing out how the Aadhaar can be used as a method of exclusion, how its technology is flawed, and how it could work against the very beneficiaries it should be helping. Citing Edward Snowden’s revelations, they argue mass surveillance will likely result, even if they don’t properly expand on how exactly the Aadhaar database will result in constant surveillance.

Part 1 – The cake

The cake is what the Aadhaar card actually is, when stripped down to its core: An identification number that can be used to identify a person electronically. In popular, mainstream debate this definition is taken for granted and is often overlooked when critics express their worries.

In the opening chapters of the book, the authors state very eloquently the difference between the Aadhaar project and any other system of identification, whether it’s your debit card or driver’s licence.

“To use an ATM to withdraw money you need a debit card (‘what you have’) and a PIN (‘what you know’). Strong authentication can be provided by the UIDAI the biometrics (‘who you are’) combined with the one-time password sent to the mobile phone (‘what you have’),” they write.

There are two key phrases in the above paragraphs: ‘who you are’ and ‘identifying a person electronically’.

The latter is why the Aadhaar card is so powerful: theoretically, barring any lemon juice or Boroplus mistakes, it allows a system to authenticate your identity electronically in a single attempt. Other methods of electronic identification could require up to two or three different ways of doing so. But because Aadhaar is capable of doing so, it allows you to build upon it a variety of different applications.

On the other hand it is the ‘who you are’ part that concerns critics of the Aadhaar project. If there’s a system that can identify who you are in one step, it only stands to reason that the privacy and security of its users should be protected. It’s not enough that the system itself is secure, but that the legal apparatus around it is also in place. And yet much of the pro-Aadhaar rhetoric ignores this.

For instance, when the Attorney-General argued before the Supreme Court late last year on this issue, he pointed out if the poor wished to continue receiving benefits, they needed to be prepared to surrender their right of privacy.

In other similar arguments, the “oh, but the benefits outweigh the risks” approach also crops up very often. While this appears to be a seemingly pragmatic stance, it ignores the fact that we can have the cake and eat it as well. It’s completely possible to have an identification system that is used to transfer subsidies and a piece of national privacy legislation that protects the rights of India’s citizens. To argue otherwise, or to bring up ‘benefits outweigh the risks’ is to behave like a child; to want something right now simply because you want it.The governments of the last five years had ample time to pass a privacy law. They just never got around to doing it.

§

When we step back and look at the three layers of the Aadhaar cake, there are two different arguments against the project when it comes to issues of privacy and security. The first concerns the Aadhaar project’s database security and privacy: who else will have access to the database, under which conditions, and what will happen in the case of data breaches?

This is extremely important – but this concern also applies to nearly every other centralised government database of citizen data. It makes more sense to have broad privacy legislation and a specific data regulator address these concerns, rather than have each database come with a specific piece of vaguely-worded legislation (the way Aadhaar has with its Section 33).

The larger argument against Aadhaar has more to do with the cherry and less to do with the icing. The Aadhaar database today is useful for transferring subsidies and other payments but isn’t as exciting to private companies as the ecosystem that can be built on top of Aadhaar. The examples laid out by Nilekani in his book have started being built albeit in much simpler forms: an Aadhaar hackathon held at Khosla Labs in Bangalore earlier this year saw college students come up with ways to innovate on digital identity using the Aadhaar system.

Scroll reported today (PTI had an earlier piece on the same company last December before the Aadhar system was given statutory backing) on a company that uses a smartphone application and Aadhaar verification to verify the background details of semi-professional workers such as drivers and maids. And yet, there doesn’t seem to be anything too wrong with this because this is exactly how the Aadhaar API is supposed to work! As YourStory points out, “the basic authentication that they [UID] allow third party apps as of now is to verify an entry in the Aadhaar database by means of querying any of the data points they capture.” Whether the Supreme Court allows this and whether the Aadhaar Bill legitimises these third-party applications, however, is yet another question.

The larger problem, therefore, is the question of government centralisation. The Aadhaar card system is almost techno-deterministic in nature; its existence demands that it be linked to other databases, to constantly extract value from its user data, and to carry out a process of algorithmic regulation in the name of efficiency. The value of the Aadhaar database, to bureaucrats, policy-makers and politicians lies in how often it can be triangulated with other sources of data.

While this may be valuable to administration and instrumental in mitigating natural disasters, it could also backfire without proper safeguards. For instance: linking the Aadhaar database to the voter ID system could possibly allow governments to nudge new voters into enrolling. But what if this is done only in swing states, in swing constituencies and in areas that favour one political party over the other?

The death of privacy in autocracies allows repressive governments to target their citizens. In democracies like India, however, the lack of privacy legislation is seen by officials, such as our Attorney-General, as a method of providing services and benefits to citizens. This confused and even shocking logic – in which the defenders of the UID system respond not by allaying privacy concerns but by insisting citizens have no privacy rights – seems characteristic of our Aadhaar-enabled future.

Aadhaar is not compulsory — it is just a voluntary “facility.” UIDAI's concept note stresses that “enrolment will not be mandated.” But there is a catch: “... benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number.” This is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well, and claiming that people are buying water voluntarily. The next sentence is also ominous: “This will not, however, preclude governments or Registrars from mandating enrolment.”

John Dreze,Visiting Prof of Economics, Uni of Allahabad, Ex-NAC Member

UID project is full of ambiguity, confusions and suspicions, but no answers -Usha Ramanathan

The Reserve Bank says Aadhaar is not good enough to open a bank account

You can Beat the UID reader with candle wax and Fevicol - J.T.D Souza

The very premise of Aadhar is flawed

It is a certification that those who claim to think on behalf of India or its underprivileged understand it so differently from the beneficiaries they think of.

In a nutshell, Aadhar will not bring about any of the benefits that are intended for its intended beneficiaries. Because that will be solving a problem of governance by adding another layer, that is imaginary and unnecessary.

To call it "technological leadership" is as removed from reality as calling a reader a writer of the book. At best it will mean that we can take a technology and ram it down the throat of the poor while other nations with stronger democratic roots and respect for citizens have not been able to do so for reasons of building consensus.

"Aadhar" is like dropping a car by helicopter in a village where there is no road and hope every villager can reach wherever they may want to go.

For anyone willing to think, Aadhar is a reflection of the huge disconnect that India has from both the world of the under privileged and the rest of the world.

Aadhaar the Last Nail in UPA II's Coffin

"All we have to show for the hundreds of thousands of crore spent on Aadhar is a Congress ticket for Nilekani" Yashwant Sinha.(27/02/2014)

UID NOT UBIQUITOUS ANY LONGER MR. NILEKANI - TRUTH HAS PREVAILED JUST BEFORE THE ELECTIONS.

WhatsApp gained users because it was useful, and people wanted to download and use it. Aadhaar, sadly, cannot be said to have "users" yet. There are as yet few uses. This is why Mr Nilekani has to emphasise the number of enrolments, not the benefits that flow from Aadhaar - because those exist today only in theory. And the simple fact is that enrolments should not be seen as a sign of success. The Only Good Idea - Business Standard

"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain

TV Mohandas Pai, former chief financial officer and head of human resources, tweeted: "selling his soul for power; made his money in the company wedded to meritocracy." Money Life Article

The expose shows how citizens of Nepal and Bangladesh are offered Aadhaar cards without identity proof. The sting reveals that even MLAs and gazetted officers sign on the forged documents to make Aadhaar cards. IBN Live

To refer to Aadhaar as an anti corruption tool despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is mystifying. That it is now officially a Rs.50,000 Crores solution searching for an explanation is also without any doubt. -- Statement by Rajeev Chandrasekhar,MP & Member, Standing Committee on Finance

Finance minister P Chidambaram’s statement, in an exit interview to this newspaper, that Aadhaar needs to be re-thought completely is probably the last nail in its coffin. :-) Financial Express

Please think through before supporting UID/ Aadhaar, so you do not regret your decision.

Emphasising the need for separation of powers, James Madison bluntly observed in his essay, Federalist 51."Because men are not angels," they need government to prevent them, by force when necessary, from invading the lives, property, and liberty of their fellow citizens. He also noted that the same non-angelic men can wield the government’s coercive machinery to use it tyrannically—even in a democracy.

·The Rural Development Ministry headed by Jairam Ramesh created a road Block and refused to make Aadhaar mandatory for making wage payment to people enrolled under the world’s largest social security scheme NRGA unless all residents are covered.

·Nilekani’s reporting structure is unprecedented in history; he reports directly to the Prime Minister, thus bypassing all checks and balances in government - Home Minister Chidambaram

·AaAdhaar is not compulsory — it is just a voluntary “facility.” UIDAI's concept note stresses that “enrolment will not be mandated.” But there is a catch: “... benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number.” This is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well, and claiming that people are buying water voluntarily. The next sentence is also ominous: “This will not, however, preclude governments or Registrars from mandating enrolment.” John Dreze, Visiting Prof of Economics, Uni of Allahabad, Ex-NAC Member

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”Mahatma Gandhi

"Protest is not something you delegate, politics is not something you outsource. It is what you stand for literally"Shiv Visvanathan, Indian Express.

"Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always. "Mahatma Gandhi

"The function of a civil resistance is to provoke response and we will continue to provoke until they respond or change the law. They are not in control; we are."Mahatma Gandhi

"Let us begin by being clear... about General Smuts' new law. All Indians must now be fingerprinted... like criminals. Men and women. No marriage other than a Christian marriage is considered valid. Under this act our wives and mothers are whores. And every man here is a bastard."-Mahatma Gandhi

"It is easy to laugh at people who fire arrows at helicopter gunships, but on the other hand it is not so easy to defeat people who are willing to fire arrows at helicopter gunships."Vietnam: A War Lost And Won' authored by Nigel Cawthorne

You can fool all the people sometimes,You can fool some people all the time,But you cannot fool all the people all the time.Truth Shall prevail.Satyameva Jayate.

Aadhaar was meant to deduplicate peoples id's and Aadhaar itself is a Duplicate of NPR and needs deduplication according to Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) headed by Secretary Sumit Bose.

Which is the bigger crime a poor family double dipping on PDS to stay alive or Govt wasting mega bucks on a white elephant called Aadhaar ?

Remember Aadhaar is not an ID card but just a Number to authenticate and tell you if you are in fact you and UIDAI will splurge Rs1.5 lakh crores ( Rs 1,500, 000, 000,000 ) in the next five years. What do people with Aadhaar get in return ? A lot of empty promises. It won't take long for people in India to wake up and understand what is going on.

How do we explain Loss of Privacy?Privacy is like our VISION.We will appreciate its loss when we go BLIND.

Massive collection of Video Clips on Unique Identity. Click on this Link http://flotadaslimaymedio.com.ar/tag/unique-identification/orderby-relevance/page1.html

WHAT AM I ?????"Yes, it is voluntary. But the service providers might make it mandatory. In the long run, I wouldn't call it compulsory. I would rather say that it will become ubiquitous"Nandan Nilekani, UIDAI Chairman (Excerpts from a conversation with Sadiq Naqvi and Akash Bisht) Answer: Aadhaar, the Unique Identity number & a Bar Code that each and every Indian will be branded with linked to a National Database maintained by UIDAI, with Help from L1 Identity a US Multinational.

"Opponents of the Aadhaar number have included advocates of privacy rights. The number however, is linked to limited personal information, with no profiling data included. Submitting a father’s name for example, is not required, allowing residents to adopt any name of their choosing and free themselves from caste identification."Nandan Nilekani's personal Opinion1061 - We have your number - OUTLOOK

Do all Indians want to become Numbers and be tracked like animals ?Do we have a Choice ?

IF IT TAKES SIX MONTHS TO ISSUE ONE MILLION NOT SO UINQUE IDENTITIES, HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO ISSUE 600 MILLION OR 1.2 BILLION UNIQUE IDENTITIES ?

WORDS OF WISDOM

“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.”Mahatma Gandhi"I have never known legislation of this nature being directed against free men in any part of the world. I know that indentured Indians in Natal are subject to a drastic system of passes, but these poor fellows can hardly be classed as free men."Mahatma Gandhi"...giving of finger prints, required by the Ordinance, was quite a novelty in South Africa. With a view to seeing some literature on the subject, I read a volume on finger impressions by Mr. Henry, a police officer, from which I gathered that finger prints were required by law only from criminals."Mahatma Gandhi"Democracy was the greatest gift of our freedom struggle to the people of India. Independence made the nation free. Democracy made our people free. A free people are a people who are governed by their will and ruled with their consent. A free people are a people who participate in decisions affecting their lives and their destinies".Rajiv Gandhi “How shall a democracy ensure its secret intelligence apparatus becomes neither a vehicle for conspiracy nor a suppressor of traditional liberties of democratic self-government?”Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Hi-tech without Panchayati Raj is just a bogus stunt for geeks and nerds."Mani Shankar Aiyar, Congress leaderAadhaar is not compulsory — it is just a voluntary “facility.” UIDAI's concept note stresses that “enrolment will not be mandated.” But there is a catch: “... benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number.” This is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well, and claiming that people are buying water voluntarily. The next sentence is also ominous: “This will not, however, preclude governments or Registrars from mandating enrolment.”John Dreze, Visiting Prof of Economics, Uni of Allahabad, National Advisory Committee Member"It is a Bad Idea to Marry UID with NREGA"Reetika Kehera"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."Ayn Rand “The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy”.Alex Carey, a noted Australian activist."People willing to trade freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."Ben Franklin.Liberty has never come from the government; it has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."Woodrow Wilson"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".Edmund Burke"Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist".Edmund Burke"Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing's snake-oil salesmen claim. No organisation can treat digitised communication as confidential. An electronic secret is a contradiction in terms".Simon Jenkins, Guardian UK“Privacy is not something that people feel, except in its absence. Remove it and you destroy something at the heart of being human.”Phil Booth, National co-ordinator of the campaign No2IDIn reality, Aadhaar intrudes into people's privacy that is hidden under the guise of reaching out.Srijit Mishra

Ten things you must know about UID

Some facts about the UID project that Indian residents should be aware of:

1. Aadhaar (the UID number) is not mandatory. People can choose not to be a part of the exercise.2. It is not restricted to Indian citizens only and is meant for residents of India, irrespective of their citizenship. An Aadhaar card does not establish citizenship of India, it is meant for identification.3. Even people without proper identification documents can apply for Aadhaar. Authorised individuals, who already have an Aadhaar, can introduce residents who don't possess any documents to establish their identity to enable them to receive their Aadhaar.4. Aadhar will not replace other identification documents such as ration card or passport.5. The UIDAI will collect only biometric and demographic information about an individual and will not ask for info on caste, religion or language.6. Date of Birth is optional (for people who don't remember/know their date of birth) and approximate age will suffice.7. Transgenders have been included in the options under gender and they need not classify themselves as male or female.8. Residents of India have an option to link their UID number to their bank accounts.9. To get an UID number residents will have to go to the nearest Aadhaar enrollment camp, details of which will be published in the local media. Residents will have to carry along certain documents, mentioned in the advertisement. Residents will also be photographed and have their fingerprints and iris scanned. The Aadhaar numbers will be issued within 20-30 days.10. The draft National Identification Authority of India bill has provisions against impersonation, providing false information and for protection of personal information collected by the UIDAI. Violations can attract penalties in the form of fines of up to Rs 1 crore and imprisonment extending up to a life term.